Stacker News Roundtable #1 - Building on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Culture, and More \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Stacker News Roundtable #1 - Building on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Culture, and More

164.9k sats \ 82 comments \ @sn 29 Sep 2023 bitcoin

zaps forwarded to @psztorc (25%) @niftynei (25%) @udiWertheimer (25%) @wlrvs (25%)

Welcome to the first ever Stacker News Roundtable!

This format will be different from the AMAs we’ve had in the past, as we have 4 guests participating in today’s conversation and we have a focused agenda outlined below.

Today’s topics:

Building on Bitcoin
Bitcoin Culture
Opportunities for Bitcoin Builders
Challenges Limiting Bitcoin Adoption

Today's participants:

@niftynei from Base58 @psztorc from Layer Two Labs @wlrvs from Fold @udiwertheimer from Taproot Wizards

This account will be posting questions every 5 minutes to give each participant time to respond and to give the community a chance to ask follow up questions.

Feel free to ask follow ups and other on-topic questions throughout the event, but since this is a focused conversation, please try to save off-topic questions for another time.

Yeehaw!

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1891 sats \ 16 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Question #1: Is Bitcoin's success inevitable? If not, what needs to be built to ensure success?

1219 sats \ 2 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think the concept of bitcoin being inevitable is relatively new. Sure, some people used to say that early on too, but that notion got much more popular and the last few years.

In reality, most generations of bitcoiners believed that some things need to be done in order for it to succeed. “Things” in all walks of life, but our topic here is building so I’ll focus on that.

Lightning for example, couldn’t have happened if we hadn’t soft forked bitcoin THREE times first in order to enable it (CLTV, CSV, SegWit). People forget that, but it was never the case that you don’t upgrade bitcoin to enable new things!

I don’t think anyone can tell us “what needs to be built”; the only way to find out is for people to build whatever crazy things they want, and see how the market reacts.

17 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 29 Sep 2023

the only way to find out is for people to build whatever crazy things they want, and see how the market reacts.

how do you square this idea with the concern that making changes to bitcoin could irreparably harm bitcoin?

do you have any frameworks for thinking about the trade-offs of enabling experimentation vs. preventing unforced errors on the base layer?

the two ideas seem to be at odds with each other

525 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I definitely prefer the type of experimentation that DOES NOT require changing bitcoin. Like ordinals. Personally I intend to focus most on my time on that type of experimentation, but not all of it. At some point I think that some potential changes reveal themselves as worthwhile and they should be pursued.

I think bitcoin itself should be changed slowly, carefully and meticulously, but that’s not the same as not being changed at all, or being afraid to change it, which I think it a more precise description of what’s going on recently.

1475 sats \ 6 replies \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

I've been doing more reading lately about the topic of "digital preservation" and one topic that comes up is how in any long running digital system, there is not point of "having preserved digital content", instead it's an endless task of "continuing to preserve" digital artifacts.

In the same way, I don't think you can say Bitcoin will ever "be a success". Rather, I'd say that it's "currently successful".

How can we ensure bitcoin's continued success?

Not to shill Base58 but to totally shill, I really think that if we're not taking the time to build good information about how bitcoin works, the protocols that it's built on, and making them really easy to access and find information about how the protocol works, we risk atrophying as an ecosystem over the next 10, 20, 50 years. It's important to me that people are able to really understand bitcoin, because without that understanding you lose some capacity to stay self-sovereign and decentralized.

I think all the work every bitcoin educator is doing of teaching people how to hold their own coins, how to run a node, how to look at mempool.space and understand what they're seeing -- this is all really important for bitcoin's continued success. :)

362 sats \ 1 reply \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

thought it'd be fun to outline why i think bitcoin is successful:

I can use it to transact with people and vendors anywhere in the world
I sell people things using bitcoin
At conferences, I can buy a coffee with bitcoin on lightning and it works

142 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 29 Sep 2023

I will like to wean my dependence off fiat and live the Bitcoin Standard. But bills and retirement funds are paid in fiat. How would you advise me to break the shackles of this fiat system?

304 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 29 Sep 2023

there is not point of "having preserved digital content", instead it's an endless task of "continuing to preserve" digital artifacts.

I'm reading this as "there's no point, but let's do it forever." I suspect it means digital artifacts need to be regularly re-preserved. Is that right?

One sadness programming brings me is that programs tend to "decay" because the environment they run in grows/changes so fast. Decay is relative in this way.

1329 sats \ 2 replies \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

there's no moment when you can declare "success" and consider the job done.

digital preservation is an ongoing, eternal process. I think that keeping bitcoin successful is similar, it's something that's worked on every day etc.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 29 Sep 2023

Makes perfect sense.

Do you have any recommended reading on digital preservation?

1425 sats \ 0 replies \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

I'm currently reading this guy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1421426978?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

941 sats \ 0 replies \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

No, Bitcoin's success is not inevitable.

But --more importantly-- imagine if it WERE inevitable. Well, then: things will go pretty well for us! There's no point in discussing anything on Stacker News. We've already won. Nothing can screw us up, apparently. So just kick back and relax! In particular, you should kick back and relax, and NOT worry about the naysayers who think that Bitcoin's success is in jeopardy. ... Therefore, whether you think Bitcoin's success is inevitable or not, you should behave as though it isn't. Or you should just kind of do nothing, or go for a walk. Or take up the violin.

Humans are prone to overconfidence. Consider the famous Fall of Rome and also the sinking of the "unsinkable" Titanic. Personally, my favorite example is Star Wars Episode 1 -- if you watch behind-the-scenes footage, you see that people are afraid to contradict the great George Lucas, even though his ideas are terrible. During 2017 I noticed the same thing, particularly with taproot and Bech32 which were absolutely horrendous ideas that everyone in the community was terrified of speaking out against.

I am also fan of documentaries where people accidentally find themselves in cults, such as "behind the curve" which is about flat-earthers. They sincerely believe that flat earth will be taught alongside globe earth "any day now".

I can give you some hard examples, in fact, of the success faltering. One is the Lightning Network itself, which has become a sacred cow. It is possible to improve the LN over time, but only if experts are allowed to discuss problems -- so that we can work together to solve them. But that is exactly what is not happening (in my opinion). The brave souls working on LN have tried to discuss the "limitations"

. I have many LN dev friends who complain to me in private how difficult it is to accomplish this very task -- believe me or not as you will. One is an ultra-famous LN dev who actually was disinvited from a Bitcoin conference because he wanted to speak "honestly" about LN. This is debt that must be repaid with interest.

The best way to ensure Bitcoin's success is --sorry to say-- my own idea of Bip300. If the underlying blockchain software can compete fairly --without the stigma of a new coin; nor the need to traverse the political L1 dev "process"-- then we would see more innovation and less politics. Devs would compete for users. We would have had BIP 118 and 119 on a drivechain many years ago, probably 2019 at least. Which would mean eltoo and ARK would probably already be in widespread use today. In fact we would probably already be moving on to the next thing. Instead, we have to wait for the bikeshedding around covenants to stop -- that is probably 3 years away. Big mistake, and all for no benefit.

977 sats \ 4 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

Bitcoin has already succeeded at proving out a viable non-state money today.
Bitcoin will face many new challenges ahead (tradfi manipulation, 2106), as well as old challenges that reemerge (fork wars, security budget, state aggression)-- so we'll see if success continues.
Building better on/off ramps and putting bitcoin closer to people that need it and those that don't know they need it only harden/accelerate bitcoin's success.
The idea that we 'need to build x' for bitcoin to succeed, whether that be ordinals (muh security budget!), on-ramps (muh mass adoption!), etc are typically marketing plays that overstate a problem or create a problem themselves.
The only things that 'need' to be built are things that make trading, holding and mining bitcoin more anti-fragile such as mining decentralization, self custody and p2p exchange. These are the things that will enable bitcoin to survive the most bearish and antagonistic of times.

201 sats \ 2 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

The idea that we 'need to build x' for bitcoin to succeed, whether that be ordinals (muh security budget!)

fwiw, on my end i don’t recall seeing many people in ordinals claiming that ordinals “need to be built for bitcoin to succeed / for the security budget”.

we’ve certainly made the point many times that ordinals benefit the security budget, so they have a positive influence, but personally I’d never claim that that’s why they “need to be built”.

they’re being built because there’s MARKET DEMAND for them, people like them and enjoy using them. that’s the only reason.

i actually agree with you that there isn’t one thing that “needs to be built”, what we “need” is to encourage experimentation, so that eventually we can find more things like ordinals that have product-market fit and also happen to be beneficial to bitcoin systemically.

201 sats \ 1 reply \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

they’re being built because there’s MARKET DEMAND

Of course, that's why you and I are both marketing towards different demands we see in the market. Yet, it's still just marketing and not related to what 'bitcoin needs.'

I think the difference is whether you think bitcoin needs either of us to market these demands to succeed. Marketing towards any and all demands may help accelerate bitcoin's success, but it could also accelerate it's failure.

201 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think the difference is whether you think bitcoin needs either of us to market these demands to succeed.

I suspect we both agree that it doesn’t.

What I believe that bitcoin needs is people experimenting, so that they can reveal new usecases for it that may find product-market fit and help bitcoin grow. If that doesn’t happen, there won’t be new ways for it to grow, and I do believe that new avenues for growth are necessary.

Once those avenues are found, sure, marketers will pop up like mushrooms, and I don’t think marketers like us are particularly systematically important ;)

131 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 29 Sep 2023

The only things that 'need' to be built are things that make trading, holding and mining bitcoin more anti-fragile such as mining decentralization, self custody and p2p exchange.

Great list of feature fundamentals!

1549 sats \ 8 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Question #3: Can you steelman the argument that Bitcoin doesn't need any new features or upgrades?

11k sats \ 0 replies \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

bitcoin is hard money. it's provably able to achieve this property as is, today.

any update to the protocol has to justify itself in terms of what it's bringing or adding to the existing system. some do this by using perceived problems ("security budget", "inability to use fancy new lightning channels", "ability to make bets on future outcomes (DLCs)", "running out of blockspace, how do we scale?")

each of these justifications is based on a core value, which is rarely "hard money", as that usecase has already been solved.

currently there's no pressing justification for making changes to the chain. until there is, i think it's difficult to build consensus for a change.

(notably, taproot was fairly uncontroversial imo because it spoke to a value all bitcoiners wanted more of: less blockspace usage and more privacy.)

1076 sats \ 2 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

it works just fine today.

i can acquire bitcoin without counterparty risk.
i can hold bitcoin without counterparty risk.
i can send bitcoin without counterparty risk.
i can pay with bitcoin because people value it.

Any update or feature that could jeopardize these things, jeopardizes everything. Don't break something that works today because you're responding to a theoretical problem of tomorrow.

142 sats \ 1 reply \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think those are explanations for why:

Bitcoin is great
Upgrades are dangerous

But they do not explain why upgrades aren’t needed!

252 sats \ 0 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

yes, I call it a tinman.

919 sats \ 1 reply \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

My steelman would be:

Every fiat currency is shooting itself in the head.
- The USD has unsustainable fiscal crisis looming, and no institution is taking a leadership role in defusing this bomb. The precedent has long been set, that we deal with these deficits via printing money.
- The EURO is badly designed currency, and the EU is badly designed. The whole thing runs on German guilt which, while admittedly a powerful force, is not enough to defeat the laws of compounding interest.
- China is great, we all love the growth, but their demography and geopolitical isolation has them basically screwed. They constantly lie about all their numbers -- classic problem with communism / top-down economics. When I visit China people love love love the USDT, of all things. No one wants Chinese currencies. Billionaires just vanish sometimes over there, you know.
- What, then? The Russian ruble? Brazil? No offense, but you've got to be kidding me.
There is no good rival Altcoin
- Ethereum has many design "uncertainties" -- very open to change. Proof of stake. Paying fees for computations that fail (because of halting problem).
- BCH had terrible strategy / execution, too many reasons to list, but disqualified the idea of hardforking in most people's heads.
- 99% of other Alts pure scams. The last 1%, such as Namecoin, are all run by pure-of-heart Bitcoiners anyway.
The Schelling Fence is just to not change anything at all, under any circumstances.

And then just wait.

That's the steelman but I don't agree with it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lumor 1 Oct 2023

EU ... The whole thing runs on German guilt

Well that's a different way of putting it than what I heard before. 😅

352 sats \ 1 reply \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

Not really?.. :)

I think this argument is typically brought forward by newer entrants to Bitcoin (although not exclusively), and it might be because they’re simply impressed by bitcoin elegance and usefulness, and the impact it can have on their lives. As such they believe it already does all it would ever need to do. They’re also reinforced by tales about bitcoin’s codebase’s immutability, but of course those tales aren’t true, and bitcoin is upgrading all the time (just maybe not in the ways that would be most impactful).

There’s also another argument which is that upgrading bitcoin is risky and therefore shouldn’t be done. While I can understand that approach, it is not the same as saying that bitcoin doesn’t need new features… it might need them, but this cohort believes that even though they might be needed, we are too stupid to do them safely.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 29 Sep 2023

Reading bitcoin Op Tech open my eyes to this reality. The software is constantly getting optimized

682 sats \ 1 reply \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

hey yall! let's talk about building on bitcoin + bitcoin adoption.

I teach how the bitcoin protocol works at Base58. I've been working on lightning as a protocol engineer / spec promotoor / C coder at Blockstream since 2018. Currently on sabbatical to write a book / run bitcoin++ conferences / ship more intuitive bitcoin dev edu.

At Base58 we recently started doing Lightning + Taproot classes in addition to our "how transactions work" basics. Hoping to get more online classes out soon TM

499 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 29 Sep 2023

You dropped this 👑

1375 sats \ 7 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Question #4: In your view, which entity (person, company, or idea) has onboarded the most new Bitcoin users (holders count as users) in the last year?

546 sats \ 0 replies \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

Adoption is important, isn't it!

My answer is... Coinbase.

Sure we all love to hate Coinbase, But "the rich get richer" as they say. A big company, with a big brand, and a big twitter account -- they advertise, they lobby in Congress. While everyone is out there tawking about nothing. Coinbase is making money. So every year my answer would probably be Coinbase.

If it isn't Coinbase, it would be one of those companies I see when I land in the Swiss Airport. Anyone who advertises. Those people are serious about adoption, and the rest of us are just larping. This is the tragedy of losing BitPay during the blocksize war -- getting that little Sticker on every payment terminal would have been Bitcoin's #1 biggest win. Instead that plan lies in shambles.

Clearly, the ordinals people gave us a big bump in actual node-running users. So they deserve special mention since node-runners are the truest Users of Bitcoin.

611 sats \ 0 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think bitcoiners (specifically bitcoin twitter) overestimate their onboarding powers. Typically, those most responsible for onboarding people en masse into bitcoin are not bitcoiners themselves, they're reckless central bankers, political censors, over zealous regulators, corrupt politicians, misguided central planners and general zeitgeists.

504 sats \ 2 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think easily ordinals and BRC-20s attracted the most new bitcoiners this year? We’ve seen A TON of attention from people in the greater crypto ecosystems who jumped onto bitcoin through ordinals, something that didn’t happen in bitcoin for quite a while.

But to be fair, the overall market has been slow this year, and I have no doubt that in previous years, many other efforts have attracted way more bitcoiners than ordinals did this year

588 sats \ 1 reply \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think I'd question whether these people really are "new" to bitcoin. Aren't ordinals just redirecting activity to bitcoin that would have been directed towards other chains?

I suspect the majority of people trading NFTs also already held bitcoin. Do you have any data to support the idea that they are net new?

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I don’t have cold hard data but I’ve spent many many hours this year talking directly to hundreds of those people (there are many, many more of them that I didn’t have the time to chat with directly) and my impression is that some of them are OG bitcoiners, some of them are NFT people etc who did have some bitcoin already, but also many of them have never paid attention to bitcoin before at all.

221 sats \ 0 replies \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

On the surface level of visible, internet-plugged in populations, definitely the inscription/BRC-20 project.

In terms of quieter, long-tail of adoption, I do think the current global economic situation with high interest rates has been sparking a kind of quiet revolution.

278 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 30 Sep 2023

I personally agree with @udiWeitheimer among other SN members.

Launched in March, the BRC-20 market cap has already reached $1 billion.

Yet, the inventor of Bitcoin Ordinals is proposing a new Bitcoin-based fungible token protocol as a potential alternative to the BRC-20 token standard.

Will Runes actually lead to sustainable protocol development, or will the frogs make a mess again?

1336 sats \ 12 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Question #2: What steps are each of you taking to attract new Bitcoin builders to your respective projects? Are you constrained by the talent pool of Bitcoin builders today?

916 sats \ 2 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

We can post a job description and get hundreds of the most qualified people within hours. This is because we are working on bitcoin and have a strong mission. Bitcoin is a cheat code for recruiting.
There are primarily two sets of bitcoin users we attract. Those that call themselves 'bitcoiners' that typically live on bitcoin twitter and those that have no idea about 'bitcoiners' or bitcoin twitter and just want a better way to increase their spending power and savings. The first group is numbers in the thousands, the second group numbers in the hundreds of millions.
We aim to make bitcoin valuable people today by using the properties that already make bitcoin successful-- a savings technology that can increase purchasing power and accelerate/protect savings.

142 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 29 Sep 2023

This is because we are working on bitcoin and have a strong mission. Bitcoin is a cheat code for recruiting.

Does that cheat code also translate into better employee retention for Bitcoin companies?

538 sats \ 0 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

From our experience, yes. I could count the number of people that voluntarily left our company on three fingers.

549 sats \ 0 replies \ @niftynei fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think most students to date to come to a Base58 class (particularly ones out side the bitcoin ecosystem already) have been through someone talking about Base58 on a podcast. If you're a podcaster, please keep talking about Base58 classes on your podcast. Thank you for your service.

To some extent the ordinals/inscription run has seen a lot of new builders pouring into the space. I also see new hires to bitcoin engineering orgs as a place for growth, as well as long time bitcoiners who just want to learn more about how bitcoin works.

So no, I don't find things particularly constrained; I think we could probably go a long way on just upskilling + educating existing bitcoiners on how bitcoin works.

709 sats \ 4 replies \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think it isn't the attraction -- its the repulsion.

A brilliant developer wants to build. They would love nothing more, than the ability to create something beautiful, from scratch. That's actually the problem with the best devs -- they insist on doing everything themselves. They hate working with code that they don't understand; and for them writing code takes about as long as reading it anyway (or so they think).

So, in order to attract the greatest builders to a project, they need nothing more or less than complete freedom to do whatever they like. This is exactly what Bip300 allows -- users can change anything about the blockchain that they like: the blocksize, the dependencies, even the programming language. All they need to do is follow the Bip300 rules, and coins will travel back and forth between their project and L1 Bitcoin.

To facilitate this, we have minimal sidechains released. They work perfectly but they don't do anything. The idea is a developer will fork them and add whatever they like.

201 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 29 Sep 2023

I think it isn't the attraction -- its the repulsion.

Repulsion to the stasis of the bitcoin protocol?

583 sats \ 1 reply \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

It is very unlikely that a new genius developer, would know how to navigate the political landscape.

They would probably come in and redo everything from scratch -- everyone would tell them to get lost, and they would. This is what happened to Vitalik for example https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=431513.0 even though he was a longtime writer for Bitcoin Magazine.

I am not a believer in Vitalik's idea -- but no one serious tried to help him implement it on Bitcoin. So it is with many Bitcoin ideas.

Building on Bitcoin, or even getting new Bitcoin merchant adoption, has fallen out of favor.

You will get support if you "build on lightning" but that is frankly part of the problem -- it reduces creativity by funneling people all into one narrow sub-field of Bitcoin.

It isn't True Creativity unless your invention will put dozens of other people out of a job.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 29 Sep 2023

They would probably come in and redo everything from scratch -- everyone would tell them to get lost, and they would.

This rings so true! In this framing, bip300 is an outlet for those people and it would seem beneficial to provide an outlet for them.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

https://github.com/LayerTwo-Labs/testchain https://github.com/LayerTwo-Labs/ddk https://github.com/nchashch/plain

416 sats \ 2 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I strongly believe that the ordinals movement (which we joined with Taproot Wizards, but in no way started) is the single movement that attracted the most new Bitcoin builders this year.

I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to new builders every single day who are making their first steps in the ecosystem, building new wallets, self-custodial marketplaces, new sidechains, zero-knowledge research, truly at the forefront of bitcoin innovation. I’m incredibly bullish on these guys.

Are you constrained by the talent pool of Bitcoin builders today?

I think that comes down to how you define ‘Bitcoin builders’. We’ve seen a ton of interest from developers and entrepreneurs who made their first steps in other ecosystems like ethereum/solana/etc, and decided to jump into ordinals. They had some catching up to do at first, but we’re 1 year into this at this point, and today I feel confident to say they’re some of the most skilled bitcoin builders I’ve ever met.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 29 Sep 2023

I strongly believe that the ordinals movement (which we joined with Taproot Wizards, but in no way started) is the single movement that attracted the most new Bitcoin builders this year.

This certainly seems true anecdotally. Why do you think ordinals had this impact when sound money didn't?

346 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

Why do you think ordinals had this impact when sound money didn't?

Sound money doesn’t look very attractive when it loses 50% of its value :)

I think that narrative clearly attracted a lot of people in 2021-2022, and probably would again if/when we see another raging bull market. But when the markets are slow, new usecases tend to do more to ignite people’s imagination than just talking about stagnating prices

1236 sats \ 5 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Bonus question: What is one Bitcoin opinion you hold that most of your Twitter followers would disagree with?

430 sats \ 4 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think seed phrases are an abomination and no one should use them :)

1407 sats \ 3 replies \ @itsrealfake 29 Sep 2023

could you share your reason for this opinion?

553 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

they’re incredibly counter-intuitive for anyone who doesn’t intimately understand cryptography and security, and they make it way too easy for people to make a mistake

it’s a long discussion but there are other ways to handle key management and recovery that don’t require people to manually handle backups

128 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 29 Sep 2023

Yes, what are the alternatives?

105 sats \ 0 replies \ @Tjacten 29 Sep 2023

For me it depends how the seeds are created. These wallets should allow you to use 3rd party programs to randomize your own seeds.

1236 sats \ 8 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Question #6: Are there any specific segments of the Bitcoin industry that dsserve more attention/focus yet are under-appreciated or under-funded today?

681 sats \ 0 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

All the things that actually harden bitcoin like p2p exchange, self-custody and mining decentralization is always underfunded. In general, however, funding for bitcoin companies draws from an extremely small pool of capital compared to 'crypto' or trad industries.

492 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

I think layer 2 designs that aren’t lightning have been ignored for way too long, but I also see this changing. By the time 2023 ends I expect alternative-L2s to raise more total funding than lightning companies this year, and I expect that’ll accelerate in the next few years.

There’s A LOT of work to be done on most of these ideas before they’re commercially viable, but I think that landscape will look very different very soon, and we’re going to see many new players in that arena.

577 sats \ 5 replies \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

Ironically, we are today making the same mistake the largeblockers did.

The problem with LargeBlockism was that, eventually, a node becomes too expensive, people don't run nodes, and then you are just left with Bitcoin as an inefficient version of VISA / WeChatPay.

Today, we have many users of "custodial" lightning. Custodial = infinite blocksize node. We also have non-cypherpunk leaders, who do not care about privacy. A non-private node = an infinite blocksize node.

We also have people who address the "node problem" via shame. That won't work.

What we should do is:

Activate BIP300
Shrink L1 blocksize
Release largeblock sidechain for payments, with fraud proofs
Release privacy sidechain, for eternal optimal privacy
Build many L1 tools to make running an L1 node fun and easy and useful, such as CoinNews

I have actually already done all these things, so we could do all of this tomorrow. Instead, however, we are focused on the opinion of tradfi , etf , various laws, etc.

We must be focused on the user experience, of course.

237 sats \ 4 replies \ @satoshi_in_the_classroom 29 Sep 2023

Wow. Interesting to hear these ideas. I think a lot of us are wondering why you or anyone else hasn't implemented these mechanisms on a similar project or forked Core and run this in a simulation/test net scenario.

As an example, seems like Vitalik wanted to build on/in Bitcoin and created Ethereum to prove and show his ideas. Appreciate your time.

218 sats \ 0 replies \ @satoshi_in_the_classroom 29 Sep 2023

I also agree on some of the challenges and issues you've outlined here and am suggesting maybe showing bip300 301 ideas in action.

Show don't tell is helpful.

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @patrick1 29 Sep 2023

It's been on testnet for years.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 29 Sep 2023

why you or anyone else hasn't implemented these mechanisms on a similar project or forked Core and run this in a simulation/test net scenario.

Why do you assume this wasn't done? Afaik, it is already tested since years.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @satoshi_in_the_classroom 29 Sep 2023

I'm assuming this because in all and every discussion I've had online or IRL ... not once did anyone reference a tested example, testnet or even plans to do so.

I mean... if I was trying to convince people of something... and had a real example to show, I'd proudly and loudly show and demonstrate.

So... IF such an example exists then it begs the question why isn't it being shown as a shining example? It's none of my prerogative to even go down this line of logic though.

The burden of proof here isn't on anyone to disprove it... but on the advocates to prove it! Right?

So my point is and was... why not today, right here, announce a plan to do this. And all Drivechain bip300 supporters can work together to build a prototype to test and show. (However you want?)

Altering L1 shouldn't be done without hard tested proof IMO.

Run it live. Let it get attacked. Refine it. Improve it. Repeat.

Why not create an example to prove the efficacy? I literally can't think of one reason myself. 🤔

1180 sats \ 3 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Question #7: What is the biggest constraint limiting Bitcoin adoption today? How can the community fix it or navigate around it?

1113 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

There’s a cultural reason in the loud opposition to experimentation.

It’s actually just loud opposition, not strong opposition! Most bitcoiners don’t oppose experiments. But many builders confuse the loud voices for strong voices, and just give up.

Personally as people might’ve noticed, I don’t really mind opposition, and I’m happy to charge away anyways, but that’s not always the case for all builders. I think many of them were turned off because of the culture, even if that’s somewhat irrational, but thankfully I think the culture is starting to change in the last year.

Experimentation is important, because through experimentation you discover new successful usecases (and many failed usecases!), and each new successful usecase brings about a wave of adoption.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 30 Sep 2023

Most people regard Bitcoin as a speculative asset, rather than what it actually is, BEST MONEY. This is negatively affecting the Bitcoin adoption.

My plea, to the Bitcoin community, is to orange pill and zap as many people as possible, keep buying Bitcoin and don't sell your Bitcoin.

The only effective way I orange pill and retain people in my community, is to zap them the sats I get zapped by the SN family here.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 30 Sep 2023

#270508

1180 sats \ 4 replies \ @sn OP 29 Sep 2023

Question #5: What would you like to see the Bitcoin community do to improve the perception of Bitcoin for those outside of the industry? Does it matter what nocoiners think of Bitcoiners?

705 sats \ 0 replies \ @psztorc fwd 29 Sep 2023

We are too reliant on shame / guilt / cancelling people. We should instead be like those churches, that go out of their way to welcome people.

Also we should focus on building things people use. Consider this --

426 sats \ 0 replies \ @wlrvs fwd 29 Sep 2023

The bitcoin community will eventually be swallowed by bitcoin's ubiquity and it will lose power over the Narrative. It's inevitable and it's already been happening over the last 10 years. Each successive wave, disrupts and transposes the previous 'bitcoin community' and it becomes something different.

382 sats \ 0 replies \ @udiWertheimer fwd 29 Sep 2023

Personally right now I’m more interested in attracting the larger crypto ecosystem beyond bitcoin, because I think it’s the lowest hanging fruit where I can make the most impact.

Those are people that inherently care about bitcoin and are bullish on it, but maybe don’t understand it well enough, or lost interest, or forgot. What we’ve found is that it’s actually relatively easy to get them to be excited about bitcoin again, and they have a lot to contribute once that happens. So we’re gonna double down on that.

I don’t have any special insight on how to reach complete newbies to bitcoin, and it’s generally more difficult to do that during bear markets anyway. But of course that’s a valuable activity and I salute those who do that well

155 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 30 Sep 2023

Bitcoin is the next global money, and should be used that way.

The Bitcoin community must get rid of the shitcoiners' mindset of get rich quick schemes. The Bitcoiners should keep buying and spending Bitcoin, and only sell Bitcoin to let others to spend it.

That's the way to live as Bitcoiners.

308 sats \ 2 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 29 Sep 2023

Not a relevant question, just a comment: this is a really good use of the fwd badge to indicate replies from the panel!

263 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 29 Sep 2023

It's why @kr suggested the fwd badge!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 29 Sep 2023

Cool! 😎

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 30 Sep 2023

The point is, there's no any money better than Bitcoin.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 30 Sep 2023

The major challenges, which are limiting the Bitcoin adoption among the third world countries, are internet connection and smartphone accessibility.

In Africa, for instance,

According to various sources from across the web, the estimated number of internet users worldwide is 5.3 billion

570 million internet users in Africa (about 38% of the continent's population)

5 million internet users in Malawi (about 24% of the country's population)

Since Bitcoin is the native currency of the internet, people need to have internet access in order to use it. How about the majority of the people who don't have any access to the internet? How can Bitcoin adoption be achieved among the people without internet connection or smartphone?

One of the viable solutions for the challenges to Bitcoin adoption among the third world countries, is promoting projects like Machankura, which enables anyone in Africa to access Bitcoin via USSD technology, without the need of the internet connection or smartphone possession. Machankura is currently working in 9 African countries, and aims to onboard members of all African countries onto the Bitcoin Standard. I wonder if there any other projects like Machankura in the other regions?

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @nicosey 29 Sep 2023

Their is not bitcoin culture. Bitcoin is better money. End of story...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @llamabyte 1 Oct 2023

Plugging my award winning article on Drivechains & Bip 300.

#216228

Foundational Narratives: Collapse of the Bitcoin Empire, A Polemic.

We describe parallels between real-life Paul Sztorc, DriveChain, LayerTwoLabs, Hari >Seldon, Empire and the Foundation from the book series by Isaac Asimov and the TV >series based on it. A humble servant of Empire (Toxic Bitcoin Maxi’s) discovers a troubling truth using his >skills in Psychohistory (Statistics). He announces the inevitable collapse ( or potential >for a collapse in Paul’s case) of galactic civilization. Hari then gathers resources to >build a refuge that can out-last and shorten the dark age, called the Foundation >(DriveChain/LayerTwoLabs). Hari Seldons actions and alarm invoke the dismissive >contempt and wrath of outsized egos and institutional personalities (Bitcoin Twitter).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SaToSHiWoMaN 11 Mar outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SaToSHiWoMaN 4 Mar outlawed

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